Group Of Physicians Planning Outpatient Cancer Therapy Site

July 25, 1985|by ANN WLAZELEK, The Morning Call

A privately run "Lehigh Valley Cancer Treatment Center," where area residents could receive outpatient radiation therapy, is being considered by a group of local physicians - including an Allentown cancer specialist who last year proposed an area outpatient surgery center.

Dr. David Prager, an oncologist, said he and some other physicians he agreed not to name have been considering the center for "about a year" and are conducting a study on the idea.

Prager said the group would know "in the next few months" if a cancer treatment center, not associated with a hospital, is needed.

In a required letter to the Pennsylvania Department of Health's division of need review, Prager asked if the development of a "free-standing, non- hospital-related private practice to offer megavoltage radiation therapy" needed to be reviewed by regional or state health planning agencies.

He has yet to receive a reply to the July 12 question; however, the regional review agency, Health Systems Council of Eastern Pennsylvania (HSC), sees nothing in the current regulations that would require a formal review.

HSC Executive Director Pete Archey said he has "very little detail" on Prager's preliminary plans, but he added, "a project like this in a doctor's office, not doing inpatient care, is not reviewable." Still, such a decision must be made by the state, he said.

Prager, an HSC board member, had first-hand experience in the review process last year when he was among 70 Lehigh Valley doctors who applied for state funds and permission to build a $3.34-million ambulatory surgical center. Even though the center proposed to perform all outpatient, or same-day procedures (including chemotherapy for cancer patients), Pennsylvania requires their review and rejected the application as duplicating hospital services.

In Prager's cancer treatment center plans, the radiation device being considered is a linear accelerator, a $1-million machine often used in conjunction with surgery and drug therapy for cancer patients.

Three area hospitals also are interested in purchasing linear accelerators, despite a health plan suggesting the need for only one more machine in the region.

Both Easton and Pocono hospitals appealed to an HSC committee this week and will again next Tuesday for a regional recommendation, before the applications are reviewed by the state.

St. Luke's Hospital, the third hospital to apply, asked for a delay in its review this month to decide if it should replace its existing linear accelerator rather than seek a second unit.

Prager said his intentions for the radiation device "have nothing to do with the pending applications for radiation therapy."

Yet, HSC's Archey said such a device, even within a doctor's office, must be included in the agency's inventory of available services.

"It raises a whole host of questions of what to do with the traditional (health plan) numbers and needs," Archey said.

HSC contends that a major health care project should be reviewed on the basis of need and cost "rather than the setting."

"The setting or auspices should not be the reason a project is regarded as reviewable or not," Archey believes.

He added, "There appears to be little movement in the state to change the law."

Other examples of plans to purchase expensive equipment, previously considered only by hospitals, include those of Sacred Heart Hospital physicians and HealthEast physicians to bring magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners to the area and plans revealed last year by a local radiation technician to privately purchase and operate a CAT scanner in a Northampton outpatient facility.